That’s right, your bounce rate can actually double, meaning you could be losing an enormous amount of visitors, right from the start.

This could be your website.

As if it wasn’t enough, research led by the same source pointed out that more than 40% of visitors who had a bad experience with a website’s performance would tell a friend or a family member.

In short, slow loading time doesn’t only affect your incoming visitors, it also potentially deters future visitors from shopping on your website.

The main problem that marketers face with loading time is that most of them can’t actually grasp the importance of improving page speed by a few milliseconds: it’s just not tangible enough.

In consequence, most online retailers often overlook page loading time in their annual priorities because they focus on other more “tangible” enhancements such as design, SEO, social media, paid ads…

And that’s a mistake. Research and data from industry giants and experts have all shown that page loading time directly affects conversions, page views, CPC, SEO, and direct revenues.

To help you sort it out and quantify the impact of page loading time over conversions, we prepared some additional insights that should help you better understand the stakes involved in improving page speed.

Keep reading, it’s worth it.

Page load time impacts users experience

Did we mention that online shoppers hate long loading time?

If not, here’s an interesting fact: according to stress-testing specialist Dotcom-Monitor, “75% of all users will typically bounce as page load time passes the 3-second mark.”

Aside from bounce rates, page speed also matters when it comes to satisfying your customers:Aberdeen points out that an extra second in loading time results in a staggering 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. That is just ridiculous.

Knowing this, adding just a few extra seconds to your loading time yields unbelievably negative results on your ability to engage your visitors and commit to good customer service while around 45% of all online shoppers expect a website to load within 2 seconds.

If page speed does affect how customers interact with your website: it also has a direct impact on their likeliness to purchase.

How website speed directly affects your sales

If your site is plagued with speed issues, there’s no doubt you’re losing tons and tons of potential customers on your website and thus many sales.

Adding to that point, let’s not forget what we said about dissatisfied customers: 40% of them won’t hesitate to talk poorly about their online shopping experiences.

About those same dissatisfied customers, HubSpot mentions that 80% of them are less likely to buy again from the same website: that is a huge loss in potential returning visitors.

Well aware of the meteoric rise of mobile traffic, Google rolled out its Mobile-First Index in 2017, meaning that the search engine now ranks websites primarily based on mobile performance factors rather than desktop performances.

What’s an ideal website load time?

When it comes to reaching a perfect loading time, Google says that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load: this is what you should aim for.

Behind the curtain, the ugly truth is rather alarming: Google points out that the average time it takes for a mobile landing page to fully load is in the 20 seconds range: millions of websites are miles away from the ideal loading time.

3 free tools to measure your website page speed

If you’ve kept reading with us to this point, you’ll probably want a quick overview of your website speed and that’s totally fine.

To help you find out the stumbling blocks that curb your website’s loading speed, here are 3 free tools that will help you improve your page speed:

Anthony BrebionAnthony is a B2B Digital Marketing Specialist. He's currently managing Demand Generation at AB Tasty, with a strong focus on marketing automation, nurturing and inbound marketing. He was previously an SEO consultant and worked several years for digital ad houses. View profile on LinkedIn.